Q: How can I read old Inbox+msf backups from Thunderbird?

Recently I found an old RAR archive of Thunderbird emails from 2003.
Hmm, let's see what is inside. But how? When I create a new email
account in Thunderbird and paste the files to the related mail profile
folder, Thunderbird only shows up 2 emails - but the old 'Inbox' is
more than 300 MB. So something seems to have gone wrong.

Is there a program to read old and possibly partly corrupted
Thunderbird mailfiles?

Thank you all,
Christian

 

Give the backed up files an .mbx extension and then open the files with
MsgView.

Download MsgView from http://www.elbiah.de/tools/old/

 

Possibilities

1) corrupted .msf files. Delete them and restart TB

2) could be that the messages have been marked in such a way as to
prevent their being viewed. See:

http://www.eyrich-net.org/mozilla/X-Mozilla-Status.html?en
http://home.att.net/~cherokee67/restoredelmail.html
http://home.att.net/~cherokee67/restoredelmail2.html